MEANINGMAKER

love

  • all the days we did not live

    I decided to walk to work this morning. Unusual for me in the winter. On my way, I happened to see an unhoused woman curled up on the cold sidewalk on the other side of the street, surrounded by the… Continue reading

  • heaven is a campfire

    I like to thinkthat before any of us had bodieswe sat around a campfirein heaven,leaning into its warmthletting the light touch our faces,our knees tucked up to our chests.The flames crackledlike tiny miracles,sending up sparksas if the stars were being… Continue reading

  • lift what you can

    My mother taught me  to shovel snow the way I imagine some mothers teach prayer – patient, shoulder to shoulder. She’d come home from a long day, and say: Come on, let’s go. Out into the dark we went, into… Continue reading

  • new year’s eve 1975

    She slipped the deep blue coat from the hanger. The fur collar brushed her cheek, a brief vanishing softness. I watched from my doorway, a child awake when I shouldn’t have been, drawn by the thin slice of light —… Continue reading

  • a gift in the cold

    Can we just talk about how the rain froze on the windshield this morning for a minute? Like a tiny murmuration of starlings – that breathtaking, swirling ballet you sometimes see those delicate birds perform by the hundreds in the… Continue reading

  • we are so lightly here

    Today, my phone’s photo app offered me a montage it called Looking Back. I usually ignore those compilations, but this morning I opened it as the downtown blurred past outside the train’s window, on my way to work. There, among… Continue reading

  • sunday school

    “I guess I feel that we should remember the deep emotions that prompt the urge to marry the next time we hear that marriage needs to be defended against people who want to participate in it. The last thing any marriage needs… Continue reading

  • the second coming

    I am a mother. A wife. A daughter. The weight of love. The truth once buried beneath duty. The heart that has wondered if love is enough. I am all wonder, whimsy, magic, and therapy. The unshaken certainty that even… Continue reading

  • creative writing class

    If we taught the five love languages in school like we teach French or German. If we learned in Kindergarten that the true measure of a life well-lived isn’t in our grand accomplishments, but in the small courageous acts of… Continue reading

  • awake on the train

    I left the train this morning one stop before City Hall, where I would usually get off —something I do on the mornings when I want a short walk to clear my head before work. I’m usually a stander on… Continue reading